The Living Years
by Rebel65
Summary: Nikolas visits Stefan's grave nine months after his death. Loose sequel to Mala's 'Bargaining with the Devil'


**Title: The Living Years  
  
Author: Rebel  
  
Email: rebel65@hotmail.com  
  
Fandom: General Hospital  
  
Rating: PG-13 Adult themes, Nikolas - Lydia  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. This is a loose sequel to Mala's "Bargaining with the Devil", written with her Permission.  
  
Summary: Nikolas's visit to Stefan's grave nine months after his death.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
July 15, 2004  
  
The temperature is surprisingly cool for a New York summer evening as Nikolas enters the deserted cemetery. His silent footfalls on the lush grass slow as he approaches the stone pathway into the Cassadine family crypt. Hesitating from the weight of the moment, he stares up at the imposing granite memorial to his family, once believed to hold the remains of his father. He had visited this place only once before, the night his uncle was interred here.  
  
He lights the torches at the entrance and pulls open the doors. Musty air greets his nostrils. Apparently the crypt holds the scent despite regular tending by the cemetery staff. Nikolas moves a torch to a bracket inside the crypt and in the dim light notices the small wilted bouquet in a sconce beside Stefan's plaque. He swallows hard. The impulse to visit came so unexpectedly he hadn't thought to bring anything. Yet another failing to add to countless others. His eyes fall to the plaque.  
  
  
  
  
**

**STEFAN DARIUS MIKKOSOVICH CASSADINE  
1955 - 2003  
  
  
  
**

**  
Nikolas traces his finger over the name lovingly before lowering himself to his knees on the stone floor. It feels more natural to be looking up at the name since he had looked up to the man most of his life.  
  
After months of not wanting to talk to anyone about anything, he suddenly has so much to say. But here now, as close to his uncle as he will ever be again, it is a struggle to get his voice to work. "I... I'm sorry I haven't visited. It was wrong of me, but I want you to know it isn't because I haven't thought of you. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't remember something you once said or a moment we shared. It's just... I couldn't face you, knowing..."  
  
Nikolas sighs heavily and looked at the stone ceiling. The oppressive weight on his chest has been present since before his uncle's death. He wonders if it will ever lift. Does he even want it to?  
  
"I held your son for the first time tonight. Lydia put him in my arms. We named him after you: Mikhail Stefan Nikolasovich Cassadine. I am claiming him as my own because it's the right thing and I know that's what you wanted. Only Lydia and I know the truth about Mikhail. But some day... when he's old enough, I will tell him about his father. How he loved me..." Nikolas's eyes suddenly fill with tears and he welcomes their sting. "How his father loved me so completely that he left him to me as a final act of devotion."  
  
"He's beautiful, Uncle," He muses with a ghost of a smile. Yet another moment that should have been shared and never would be. A beautiful child, a hope for the future. An innocent to love with his whole heart. This above everything, they should have shared. "He's fair like his mother, light brown hair and green eyes... your eyes." Tears spill over and streak down his cheeks unchecked. It feels good to cry after months of a living death. A bleeding of a festering wound. Tiny Mikhail ripped off the scab and there is no going back to before. Is this how it felt for his uncle the first time?  
  
"How... how did you know? How did you know that I would need him, Uncle? Not as the savior for the Cassadine empire, but my..." His voice breaks under the weight of the pain, the wonder. "MY savior? I know that's the only reason you went to Lydia, it's the only explanation that makes any sense. You knew you were going to die ... and you gave me Mikhail." Nikolas chokes on a sob and shakes his head in disbelief. "So I wouldn't be alone anymore. So that I would always have a part of you to love forever. How could you know I needed that to live when I didn't know myself?"  
  
Pulling himself together, He dries his face with the cotton sleeve of his shirt. "I failed you, Uncle." He pauses to let the words sink into the stone, bleed into his soul before repeating them. "I failed you. I gave up on you when you needed me most."  
**  
**  
"I... I didn't want to understand why you did what you did," Nikolas admits, his voice holding none of the anger of before. Only the soft echo of regret. "Why you would try to kill the woman I loved. I didn't want to forgive you for it. But you..." His voice shakes with unburdening of his secret shame. "You forgave me everything. Even in the face of my abandonment of you at your darkest hour, you gave me your love and devotion. You never wavered. Even when I said I hated you. You're the only one in my entire life that has never stopped loving me."  
  
  
**_You're the best thing I've ever had in my life. I hope some day you'll forgive me and allow some part of me back in your heart.  
_**  
  
"I know it's too late for us, but I want you to know I understand better now. When I held Mikhail tonight, I finally understood the feelings you must have felt when you made that desperate choice. A terribly wrong choice, I wish to God you never made because..." Nikolas drew in a agonized breath. "Because you'd still be here with me. And I want that more than anything...."  
  
**  
_We all want things we will never have.  
_**  
  
"God, I miss you." The admission crumbles the last of his defenses and once again he is the little boy who loved Stefan with whole heart, who thought the sun rose and set on his uncle's orders. Love without reserve, without conditions. "I would do anything, ANYTHING to have five more minutes with you. To see you again and tell you how much I love you. I will always love you, Uncle. Alwa---"  
  
Dissolving, Nikolas lowers his forehead to the floor and cries, his arms wrapped around his shaking middle. The sobs spring from deep within him, a flood of tears spill onto the stone floor. Nine months of unspent grief pour out of him. A grief that he is sure to know until the end of his days.  
  
"Nikolas."  
  
"Nikolas." Her soft voice repeats his name patiently until his bowed head lifts. She kneels at his side and strokes the back of his head. This has been coming for nine long months. A ticking bomb. A husband too quiet, too calm, too cold -- too dead inside to be alive.  
  
The bomb detonated tonight when she forced Mikhail into Nikolas's resistant arms. At the end Nikolas would live or disintegrate completely. Either would be better than how he's been existing. "Stefan knows you loved him. He knows."  
  
"I... I didn't get to tell him, Lydia. I.. I told him to get out. I told him I never wanted to see him again...." Nikolas rocked back and forth, his voice childlike and broken. "He gave up his whole life for me. His WHOLE LIFE! And he died believing I hated him. Maybe he would have fought harder to stay alive if..." The horrifying thought long buried steals his breath and crushes the tattered remains of his heart.  
  
"He knew you loved him, Nikolas," Lydia implored again. "He knew. Stefan has already forgiven you. When will you forgive yourself?"  
  
"Never. I can't." What was left of his soul wouldn't let him. It was what he deserved.  
  
"You must," Lydia insisted. "For Mikhail, For me, if not for yourself. We need you whole and in this life, Nikolas. Stefan would want that more than any of us. Don't squander his last gift."  
  
She is a mystery to him, his wife. A woman who accepted his uncle in his darkest hour when he could not and created something beautiful in the worst of circumstances. And now again, in this Cassadine's darkest moment, she offers herself as an anchor in the sea of his grief. Nikolas reaches up to clutch her hand on his shoulder.  
  
Stefan gave him more than one gift that night. "Will... will you help me?" He asks hesitantly.  
  
"You know I will. Any way I can. Come home to me and Mikhail. Live the life Stefan left for you. It's the way he would want you to honor him."  
  
Nikolas stares at his uncle's crypt, the name inscribed in bold letters, the small sad looking bouquet.  
  
"The flowers. They were from you."  
  
"From me and Mikhail," Lydia corrects. "I will always be grateful to Stefan for giving us our son."  
  
**_And you_.**  
  
Nikolas rose slowly to his feet to face his wife - his future. Taking both her hands, he brings them to his lips, for the first time seeing her clearly. Such strength in a diminutive form. All the more amazing in that it was forged in the face of Cassadine insanity. What would have broken another Cassadine Bride seems only to enhance her power and grace. Is this what his uncle saw before he died?  
  
"And I will always be grateful to you. You gave us an heir, Lydia. Because of you the Cassadines won't disappear...." He drops her hands and steps closer, his eyes traveling over her flawless face, cataloging every exquisite feature. "As we may deserve to." Taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he tips her face up to meet his, his voice no more than a whisper on her lips.  
  
A promise given for a lifetime.  
  
"You and your child will have my every loyalty."  
**  
  



End file.
